After time, pipelines often suffer from corrosion of the inner diameter and/or minor cracking and/or leakage. Such pipelines must often be replaced or rehabilitated. Replacement often involves the movement or destruction of above-ground structures, such as roadways or sidewalks. Rehabilitation, on the other hand, may permit a new inner diameter of the pipe to be created using the existing pipeline as an outer shell, which may eliminate the need to dig up large sections of existing pipeline and/or water mains, and which may involve significant cost savings over replacement.
One form of pipeline rehabilitation involves the installation of a tubular liner inside of a host pipe with hardenable cement mortar (formed from grout) between the tubular liner and the host pipe. However, this process may form gaps or deficiencies in grout coverage between the tubular liner and the host pipe which are not easily observable, particularly if a non-transparent tubular liner is used. In addition, initial inspection of grout coverage must often wait until after the cement mortar/grout has hardened and the pipe-end hardware can be removed; by this time, it is often too late to easily correct, repair, or re-install grout or liner if grout coverage deficiency is discovered.